My Daddy left for the Douglas Fishing Club and told me to take James Graves, tractor and seedlings, and plant a twenty-acre field of Slash pines. ‘No problem’, I thought, ‘I get to be the Boss Man.’

Everything went well until James and I took a break and he suggested that since it was Friday afternoon and cold, it would be nice to have a sip of store bought wine to fight off the chill and drudgery. Since I had never had a taste of store bought wine and was a bit fatigued and cold, I agreed. James had a driving license so we took off to Ambrose with two dollars and bought two pints of King Cotton peach wine at Myrtice’s juke.

I must admit in looking back that the first sip I took was delicious, and the second, and the third. By the time we got back and made one round on those long rows, James dropping seedlings and me driving the tractor, we were both at the point all winos must get to in that we needed one more drink to cap things off. Having no more money, a return to Ambrose was out of the question. James suggested we pay Geech Brown a visit.

Geech was an old man that lived just down the road and sold moonshine by the drink, jug, or load. After a long bout of haggling combined with a good bit of begging, since we were broke, Geech agreed to let us have a 16 ounce Budweiser can full of ‘shine’ on credit.

James and I could not believe our good fortune at this windfall and laughed all the way back to the job site. Once there, James took a big sip, swallowed, made a face something awful, and said, “Man, that’s good”. Passing the can to me, I swallowed my very first mouthful of moonshine and wasn’t able to say anything for a full minute. Back and forth the can was passed until it was empty and it was time to finish the pine tree planting.

I attempted to mount the tractor, missed the step, fell and took a silver dollar size piece of skin off my shin, got up, and finally on the third try, got in the tractor seat. James was saddled up on the small three-point hitch pine tree planter. He faced backward and could not see where we were going and could not have cared less. His mind must have been back in Africa where his ancestors came from because it sure wasn’t on pine tree planting. He missed dropping half the seedlings and half the other half was planted with the roots sticking up and the tree in the dirt. Not that it mattered to me for I was too focused on trying to figure which row I was supposed to follow; the one on the right, the one on the left, or the two in the middle.

If James had bothered to look back he might have saved us when I came to the backside of the pond dam. I am ashamed to say, after all these years, that I have ever been in such shape as I was in that day, but I was. I was in such shape that I kept going up, up, up, the backside of the dam as James, oblivious as to what was about to happen, kept dropping pine trees and trying to sing some old Muddy Waters tune when the tractor, supported by all the weight on the rear, climbed straight up into the air until the rear tires cleared the back edge of the dam and climbed onto the flat surface of it. At that point, now straight up in the air and standing on the rear tires alone, the tractor came crashing down but the front end landed several feet down the front edge of the dam and with such catapult like force force it threw James about twenty feet up in the air and out into the pond with him still singing “little girl, little girl, WOWWW”. He hit the water headfirst and if I live to be a hundred I’ll never forget the look on his face when he surfaced.

I must admit that now that those trees are 50 plus years old, every time I ride by them I think of me and James on that Friday, King Kotton, Geech Brown, and what a time our two little inebriated mannish boy behinds had getting the tractor out of that pond before Daddy came home.

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